Sympathy for the Devil (2 page)

‘Oh please, don’t start with theories. He was hardly going to off himself jumping into the mosh pit. And nothing’s worse for the image than a suicide that goes idiot wrong.’ She watched as Rhys got up, a look of puzzlement on his face. He stepped into the bathroom. Through the door came the swish of the shower curtain, then the sound of water flowing. She stood, sensing Face’s gaze still flickering across the room as she went over to the window.

The outlines of the city had disappeared behind the fog. She looked out, seeing nothing, her heart thudding. The streets were silent. Everyone was huddled around their TVs or gone to join the crowds at the waterside. The only sound was the faint trickle of a radio somewhere playing one of Face’s old hits. It didn’t sound like music, more like someone moving something heavy around her head. Dropping it, dragging it, then dropping it again.

She closed the curtain, let her hand rest on the shelf. There were no books there, only the delicate origami birds Rhys made. Swans, owls, ravens, others she didn’t recognise. Imaginary creatures, perhaps. It was a habit he had, working with Japanese paper during long undercover stake-outs around the city, the ones she sometimes joined him on. When he was bored or just watching he made swans and owls and other birds; alone he only ever made ravens, the paper’s tip folded out into hooked beaks. The birds weren’t something he showed around: as soon as he made them he tore them up. She’d been the one to save them, display them in this neat line on the shelf. Made the place feel like a nest, he said; she wasn’t sure if this meant he liked it. Maybe it was just his way of saying he wasn’t ready for anything permanent yet, his way of telling her not to take anything about him for granted.

She was only trying to make their bare flat a little nicer, not just a place they crashed between shifts. Putting a few pretty things on shelves didn’t mean she was thinking of vows and wedding bells. She never thought that far ahead, took each day at a time. In the mirror over the shelf she caught a brief glimpse of herself, and quickly turned away. She didn’t like what she saw, her eyes too wide and staring like a child’s. She wondered again what Rhys had ever seen in her, someone to protect, a duty, a responsibility, or was it something more?

She heard him coming out of the bathroom, the clatter of the wardrobe as he pulled out some clothes. She didn’t have to turn to see him. He was there always scored behind her eyes. Like the afterglow of a too-strong light. His snake hips and narrow chest, pale as the sheets they’d lain in all weekend, his eyes like some damaged poet’s eyes and nothing like a fellow officer’s.

It was at moments like this she wondered why she needed him as much as air and water. There was what he had done for her in the woods of course, his saving her. But that was only the start of it. It was the sense of a pain in him, that he was keeping locked away, something she couldn’t reach. Whenever she thought she’d found the door to it, another closed in her face. To understand him she needed to open all those doors. But there was always a risk in that: to understand a man like this might be to lose him.

Whatever it was, it was eating him up. She felt it in the knotted muscles in his back when he should’ve been spent and empty in her arms. She saw it in that stoop he’d begun to walk with. It was like something loaded on his shoulders he couldn’t shake off. She heard it in his voice, the dryness in his throat. And it was there in his eyes. The way they didn’t lose themselves in hers any more, how tight they’d gone at the rims and the irises shrunk and pointed like pinpricks.

She went down the cold passage into the tiny kitchen. From the shelf she took down an onion, peppers, lemon grass, and laid them on the board. She took a knife, began chopping. When had they last had a proper meal together?

‘I’m not hungry.’ Rhys was standing by the door. ‘Late for my shift at that crack pitch in the docks.’

‘But the docks are overrun tonight, you said it yourself. Why go?’

He didn’t answer. She watched him take his keys from the bowl, a Marlboro soft pack from the carton next to it. She pushed the chopped food off the board, down into the sink. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said softly.

Later she’d wonder why she went with him. Maybe things would have been different if she hadn’t gone. Maybe if you don’t see something in some way it never happens. Like trees falling in the woods. If no one was there to hear them falling maybe they never made a sound.

She glanced at Rhys, but he remained expressionless. She sensed he was thinking of a reason to go on his own. He was taking his time putting on his puffer jacket, his black wool cap.

If she didn’t know him, had just passed him in the street, she’d say he looked like a dealer, street, no different from the types he busted every week. He fitted in well among them, maybe too well. But behind the hardness she sensed a strange purity there, almost other-worldly, as if he were on a sacred mission he kept strictly to himself. He didn’t share his colleagues’ interests in sport or banter or drink with them. Very little out in the world ever seemed to interest him, only her and his work. When he ate he liked to eat in silence. When he listened to a track, he left half an hour of silence either side. If she put on music, he switched it off; scented candles, he snuffed them out. When he touched her he did just that: nothing else seemed to exist for him, just those simple moments between them. Everything he did as if for the first and last time. It was intense, as if he believed the time he had left was limited and he wanted to strip everything down to the essentials. But maybe that was just how he looked at things. If he’d believed he was in some sort of danger, he would have told her, wouldn’t he?

She followed him down to the car. It was cold, the heater blew freezing air around her feet. They drove without talking through the terraces of Bute towards the waterside.

At the lower crossroads Rhys began tracking along the radio dial. All the stations were playing Face’s old hits, the talk shows going over what had gone down at the gig and the bridge. When Rhys hit the end of the dial he turned it off. Catrin could hear snatches of Face’s low, murmuring voice still playing through her head. She began humming to shut the sound of it out.

She turned to Rhys in the darkness, put her hand lightly on his thigh. ‘It’s there in Face’s lyrics,’ she said. ‘What he did tonight, it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy.’

‘Which lyrics?’

‘That one about the snow.
I’ll walk across snow without leaving footprints
.’

‘That could just be a reference to his anorexia.’

‘Anorexia? It’s an unusual condition for a man.’

‘Well, Face was an unusual man.’

As they got closer to the water they passed several BBC vans down from Broadcasting House in Llandaff. Beside them Catrin recognised the Asian reporter from Sky News, his scarf the only point of colour among the columns of black-clad Goths silently filing past. On both sides of the road were more OB vans, their satellite dishes silhouetted in the dim light of the candles cupped in their hands by the crowd.

As they neared the block where Face had lived the bodies tightened around the car. The headlights picked out a flash of feather boas and sequins, some girls rushing forward, their make-up smudged with tears. Locals from surrounding pubs were waving their arms at each other, bobbing forward in the quickening flows of the crowd. For a moment the road ahead appeared blocked by some form of queue. A man was standing in a doorway, letting in one person at a time. There was a glimpse of a stairway up to a flat, a view down onto Face’s street and the waterfront.

‘Typical. The guy’s only been gone five minutes and already someone’s making a few quid off him.’ Rhys held his warrant card out of the window, his hand on the horn. They passed a couple of uniforms standing beside some transparent evidence bags. Inside Catrin saw the limbs of a shop dummy, the type that would be light enough to float, a black leather jacket and wig. But no one seemed to be paying the find any attention. The crowd was pushing forward towards the end of the street. All eyes were focused now on a slim female figure standing on something raised behind the cordon.

In the roped-off rectangle in front the press were gathered. The woman’s face was hidden by the mikes clustered around her. But Catrin already recognised the lean, taut figure and rod-straight black hair. It was Della Davies, the senior press officer from Area Headquarters.

The woman rested one hand on the hip of her tight ski-pants, her patent jacket glinting in the lights. She looked like she was striking a pose at the end of a runway rather than briefing on a dead man.

Catrin felt a sudden surge of anger. She’d heard the talk around the station, that Della had her eye on Rhys, that there was something between them. The call was that Della was the sort who always got what she wanted in the end, always got her man. Or woman: she walked both sides of the street. And at that moment Catrin didn’t want to look at Rhys. She didn’t want to see what his face might betray.

Against the Dellas of the world she’d never stood a chance. She’d been brought up by a chaotic hippie mam, whose idea of beauty was henna, patchouli, tie-dye smocks. Scratch the surface, she was still gawky, childlike, that tomboy who never wore skirts, hid herself behind boys’ kit. Any man who stared at her too long, she thought there was something wrong with him, didn’t trust him. But Della – Della soaked up men’s gazes like it was her birthright, always looked like she’d just spent the last five hours in a day spa. Her effect was sleek as a doll, a perfect shiny shell but what was inside no one seemed to know.

‘Yes, for the last time, I can confirm Mr Face’s body has not yet been recovered.’ Through the freezing air Della’s throaty voice carried over the hushed crowd. The Sky reporter was jostling his way to the front, holding a mike up under her plumped-up lips.

‘So when the tides go out, where do you expect the body to be lying?’ he asked.

‘I can’t speculate on that. We’ve got some of the strongest tides in the world here. Sometimes it can take several months before bodies are found.’

‘Then why not let us through, what are you hiding back there?’ The voice was American this time, young and reedy.

‘We’re not hiding anything, sir.’ Della cast a disdainful glance in the direction of the voice. She ran her long nails briefly along the top of the panel. ‘These cordons are purely an issue of crowd safety.’

The Sky reporter still had his mike in her face. ‘Any other possible explanations for Face’s car being found abandoned at the suicide bridge?’

‘Nothing has been ruled out at this stage.’ For a moment Della lightly stroked the shaft of the mike before pushing it away. ‘And I’d remind you that the bridge is still open to traffic and can be popular with visitors taking in the views.’

‘But Face wasn’t a visitor, and since the new bridge was built, no one drives that way. His car was found after dark, so he was hardly going down there for the view. Are you saying the police are pursuing a line of inquiry other than suicide?’

‘No further comments.’ Della abruptly ducked away among the uniforms. As Catrin turned she noticed Rhys was staring at the spot where Della had disappeared.

‘Della’s certainly enjoying her fifteen minutes,’ he said.

‘Knowing Della, she’ll make it last longer than that.’ Catrin kept her eyes straight ahead as Rhys edged the car up to the cordon. He held up his card, the panel was lifted by a young WPC and they passed through. As they drove on into empty streets the hum of the crowd soon died away behind them. The only sounds were the lapping of the waves against the front, and out in the channel the chug of a motorboat, its dim form ghostly behind the banks of fog.

Rhys’s surveillance point was down the other end of the waterfront, but he didn’t seem in any hurry to reach it. He was slowly doubling back around the block into the street behind the cordon. All the time Catrin could hear the smooth whirr of a large car behind them. They were moving slowly, but it didn’t pass, just kept a steady distance behind.

In the rearview Catrin saw the car pulling up about twenty yards back on the deserted street. ‘Looks like someone wants you to stop,’ Catrin said quietly. Rhys’s shoulders tensed. He had slowed to a crawl, not looking round.

They waited, but no one got out from the car behind. She noticed Rhys checking the rearview for a moment before he opened the door. He said nothing. He was walking back into the headlights. Catrin turned and watched him disappear behind the glare.

Catrin saw only a single figure in the car. It was difficult to make out much, but she could see long straight hair, a jacket with a sheen to it. Whoever it was had left the headlights full on so they couldn’t be seen clearly.

Rhys was leaning through the window now. She thought she saw him putting something in his pocket. Then he was half running back through the glare as the other car revved, swerved off at speed towards the cordon.

Catrin caught the faint scent of a woman’s perfume as Rhys closed the door.

‘Who was that? Della?’

He shook his head as he settled back in his seat. ‘Nothing to worry about.’ He started the car, his eyes straight ahead as he moved towards the surveillance point.

Thirty yards further along he turned next to the pavement along the dock. To the right a small pontoon provided berths for four small boats, all of which looked in need of repair and a coat of paint. On the other side was a clear sightline up to the door of what had once been a late-night drinking club.

The place had been closed for months. Most of the local landlords had sold their leases to the seafront development companies. This whole area was a ghost town now, every building around them marked out for demolition.

Catrin watched as Rhys lifted the night-sight Bushnells and camera into place on the console, focused on the front of the empty club. The lights were off above the doorway. Usually there’d be a couple of Somali lads just out of range of the CCTV above. Occasionally cars would pass or lads with heads down under their hoodies to buy a stone or a sixteenth, moving off into the alleys behind. But tonight with the cordon in place the pitch was deserted, no sign of passing trade.